The violence of June 4 stunned China's intellectual community. Although reflections and introspections began almost immediately, it would be over two years before intellectuals began to regain their voice, and when they did it was not only a different voice that emerged but also a very changed and divided community. Chinese intellectuals would re-emerge in a very different society, and their reactions to the surrounding socioeconomic and political events polarized them in a way not apparent in the 1980s or even, perhaps, before.

The silence and general irrelevance of the intellectual community in the wake of Tiananmen contrasted vividly with the turmoil among the political elite. The Party leadership was neither cowed into silence nor irrelevant, but it was shaken badly. Questions about the goals of reform had simmered just below the surface for years. Was reform, as Party documents repeatedly proclaimed, about the “self perfection” of socialism or was reform leading China away from socialism? Zhao Ziyang was a lightning rod for such issues. Conservative Party leaders believed that Zhao had been leading reform farther and farther from socialism and that Tiananmen was the inevitable and foreseeable denouement of the reform program that Zhao led and symbolized. It is apparent from the tone of many of the denunciations of Zhao appearing in the weeks and months following Tiananmen that such conservatives resented Zhao personally; they believed that he had ignored and insulted them, treating their concerns contemptuously.